[Lehmann, John] / [Liddell Hart, Adrian] / [Harold Acton] / [Manuscript Postcards from Lehmann to Liddell Hart].

Provenance: From the personal library of Adrian Liddell Hart / Collection of three personal autograph/manuscript-postcards from John Lehmann to Adrian Liddell Hart, together with 28 Volumes of John Lehmann’s “New Writing”, some bearing the name of Adrian Liddell Hart, including Volume I (includes George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” in second edition). Besides the 28 Volumes of Lehmann’s “New Writing”, the collection also includes: 1. John Lehmann’s personal copy of Sean O’Faolain’s “Vive Moi!” – An Autobiography (First Edition, London, Rupert Hart-Davies, 1965), with John Lehmann’s name on the front free endpaper and some markings in the text. / 2. John Lehmann – Pleasures of New Writing – An Anthology of Poems, Stories and other Prose Pieces from the pages of NEW WRITING. Edited by John Lehmann. (First Edition, London, John Lehmann, 1952). [Even though this Volume is also from Liddell Hart’s library, it bears a different name of a pre-owner on the half-title].

Mixed Editions. 30 Volumes. London, John Lehmann / Allen Lane – Penguin Books / Rupert Hart-Davis, 1940-1965. Octavo. [The Postcards written from Venice, Florence and Santa Barbarabetween the years 1952 and 1977 / Postcard I: From John Lehmann in Venice to Adrian Liddell Hart: “This city does not boast a supply of the “Sunday Dispatch”, and as the writer was gripped and enthralled by the last installment on June 1st, he hopes you will keep copies of the …for him to read on his return in ten Days time – J.” / Postcard II: From John Lehmann in Florence to Adrian Liddell Hart: “Am staying with [Sir] Harold Acton here in his marvellous Villa – calme luxe [″Villa La Pietra”], all night……pity, you aren’t with me. Off to the sea this afternoon – may post this in Porto Ercole. Your old friend is relaxing. Gracefully – Love J.” [Date hard to decipher, possibly in 1962] / 3. Postcard III: From John Lehmann in Santa Barbara in California to Adrian Liddell Hart: “Terribly sorry to hear about the broken leg, may it mend quickly, as surely it must undo the ministrations of Florence …..Nightingale. I expect to be in England all March, but then off again – to Jimmy Carter Country – Love J.” [20.2.77]. Hardcover and Softcover. Of the series of 28 Volumes of the “New Writing ″ Series, only three with stronger signs of wear and in poorer condition. All others in very good condition with only minor signs of wear. Lehmann’s personal copy of Sean O’Faolain’s Autobiography with the original dustjacket in poor condition but the Volume itself very good.

This set of books belonged to Adrian Liddell Hart, Lover and friend of publisher John Lehman, from whom he received these publications fresh from the press.

Included in the collection are for example:

″The Penguin New Writing″

Volume I – (Second Edition, 1941) with Georg Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” / Morton Freedgood – “Good Nigger” etc.

Volume II: – (First Edition, 1941 with a note in pencil by Lehman: “Publication Jan. 10”) with Rosamond Lehmann – A Dream of Winter / Stephen Spender – Books and the War I / Louis MacNeice – June Thunder / B.L.Coombes – The Way we live now I / Fanfarlo – Shaving through the Blitz etc.

Volume III: – (First Edition, 1941) with W.H.Auden – Lay your sleeping Head / Willy Goldman – The Way we live now II / Fanfarlo – Shaving through the Blitz – II / Rosamond Lehmann – When the Winters came / Jean Giono – The Corn Dies /

Volume IV: – (First Edition, 1941) with Louis MacNeice – March gave clear Days / C.Day Lewis – Ode in Fear / Margot Heinemann – Grieve in a New Way etc.

Volume V: – (First Edition, 1941) with W.H.Auden – Exiles / F.G.Lorca – The Dawn / Louis MacNeice – The Way we live now IV etc.

Volume VI: – (First Edition, 1941) with John Lehmann – Seven Poems of Vienna / Bert Brecht – The Informer / Dylan Thomas – A Visit to Grandpa’s / etc.

Volume VII: – (First Edition, 1941) with Jean Paul Sartre – The Wall / F.G.Lorca – Song / W.H.Auden – The Leaves of Life / Rosamond Lehmann – For Virginia Woolf / etc.

Volume VIII: – (First Edition, 1941) with Laurie Lee – The Armoured Valley / Dylan Thomas – The Peaches / Georg Anders – Song of the Austrians / Ahmed Ali – Morning in Delhi / Beatrix Lehmann – The £2000 Rasperry etc.

Volume IX: – (First Edition, 1941) with Graham Greene – Men at Work / Robert Pagan – The Night before the War / F.G.Lorca – Song of the Andalusian Sailors / Charles Brasch – In These Islands / Inez Holden – The Flat above me / Yuri Olesha – Love etc.

Volume X: – (First Edition, 1941) with Laurie Lee – Poem / Jean Howard – The Night of the Landslide / Ignazio Silone – The Journey to Paris / Rex Warner – Two Sonnets / Roderick Finlayson – The Totara Tree / W.H.Auden – The Novelist etc.

Volume XI: – (First Edition, 1941) with Anna Seghers – The Rescue / Dylan Thomas – Extraordinary Little Cough / F.G.Lorca – The Clear Death / Isobel Leslie – Fine Spring Weather /

Volume XIII: – (First Edition, 1942) with Laurie Lee – Two Poems / Christopher Isherwood – Berlin Diary II / John Lehmann – Vigils / Frank Sargeson – Making of a New Zealander / Paul Nizan – About Theseus / Elsa Triolet – “Mayakovsky – Poet of Russia” / With Drawings by Keith Vaughan /

Volume XIV: – (First Edition, 1942) with Julia Strachey – Fragment from a Diary / Christopher Isherwood – The Day at La Verne / W.H.Auden – Two Poems / Walter Allen – Reflections on Aldous Huxley / With Photogravure Illustrations From the Film “The Foreman went to France” /

Volume XVIII: – (First Edition, 1943) with John Lehmann – The Heart of the Problem / Walter Allen – The Novels of Graham Greene / George Barker – Elegy on the Eve / Laurie Lee – Two Poems / Jiri Mucha – Manoeuvres / etc.

Volume XIX: – (First Edition, 1944) with Edith Sitwell – One Day in Spring / Donagh MacDonagh – My Grandfather was Irish / W.H.Auden – Victor / John Lehmann – Virginia Woolf / etc.

Volume XX: – (First Edition, 1944) with Demetrios Capetanakis – The Isles of Greece / Elizabeth Bowen – Mysterious Kor / George Barker – Three Poems / Edith Sitwell – Girl and Butterfly / John Lehmann – Three Poems / H.B.Mallalieu – Two Poems / William Plomer – Introduction to E.M.Forster etc.

Volume XXIII: – (First Edition, 1945) with Denis Glover – It was D-Day / John Heath-Stubbs- The Defeat of Romanticism / Laurie Lee – Three Poems / Edith Sitwell – A Song of the Cold etc.

Volume XXIV: – (First Edition, 1945) with Frank O’Connor – A Story by Maupassant / Peter Viertel – Smudge / John Lehmann – State Art and Scepticism / etc.

Volume XXV: – (First Edition, 1945) with Anthony Thorne – Potatoes Have Hips of Their Own / Rupert Doone – Three Shakespearean Productions / John Heath-Stubbs – Georg Crabbe and the Eighteenth Century / etc.

Volume XXVI: – (First Edition, 1945) with John Lehmann – Two Poems / Alec Guinness – Money for Jam / etc.

etc. etc.

etc. etc.

Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann (2 June 1907 – 7 April 1987) was an English publisher, poet and man of letters. He founded the periodicals “New Writing” and “The London Magazine”, and the publishing house of John Lehmann Limited.

Born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, the fourth child of journalist Rudolph Lehmann, and brother of Helen Lehmann, novelist Rosamond Lehmann and actress Beatrix Lehmann, he was educated at Eton and read English at Trinity College, Cambridge. He considered his time at both as “lost years”. At Trinity, Lehmann had a passionate relationship with Virginia Woolf’s nephew, Quentin Bell.

After a period as a journalist in Vienna, he returned to England to found the popular periodical New Writing (1936–40) in book format. This literary magazine sought to break down social barriers and published works by working-class authors as well as educated middle-class writers and poets. It proved a great influence on literature of the period and an outlet for writers such as Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden, Edward Upward and miner-author B. L. Coombes. Lehmann included many of these authors in his anthology Poems for Spain which he edited with Stephen Spender. With the onset of the Second World War and paper rationing, New Writing’s future was uncertain and so Lehmann wrote New Writing in Europe for Pelican Books, one of the first critical summaries of the writers of the 1930s in which he championed the authors who had been the stars of New Writing—Auden and Spender—and also his close friend Tom Wintringham and Wintringham’s ally, the emerging George Orwell.

Wintringham reintroduced Lehmann to Allen Lane of Penguin Books, who secured paper for The Penguin New Writing a monthly book-magazine, this time in paperback. The first issue featured Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant”. Occasional hardback editions combined with the magazine Daylight appeared sporadically, but it was as Penguin New Writing that the magazine survived until 1950.

He joined Leonard and Virginia Woolf as managing director of Hogarth Press between 1938 and 1946. He then established his own publishing company, John Lehmann Limited, with his novelist sister Rosamond Lehmann (who had a nine-year affair with one of Lehmann’s contributing poets, Cecil Day-Lewis). They published new works by authors such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Nikos Kazantzakis, and discovered talents like Thom Gunn and Laurie Lee. Lehmann edited two anthologies of new writing entitled Orpheus: A Symposium of the Arts (1948–49). He also published the first two books by the cookery writer Elizabeth David, A Book of Mediterranean Food and French Country Cooking. He published two of Denton Welch’s posthumous works: A Voice Through a Cloud (for which he supplied the title) (1950) and A Last Sheaf (1951). This publishing house published several book series, including the Chiltern Library, the Holiday Library, the Modern European Library, and the Library of Art and Travel. It operated from 1946–1953.

In 1954, he founded The London Magazine, remaining as editor until 1961, following which he was a frequent lecturer and completed his three-volume autobiography, Whispering Gallery (1955), I Am My Brother (1960) and The Ample Proposition (1966). In The Purely Pagan Sense (1976) is an autobiographical record of his homosexual life in England and pre-war Germany, discreetly written in the form of a novel. He also wrote the biographies Edith Sitwell (1952), Virginia Woolf and her World (1975), Thrown to the Woolfs (1978), Rupert Brooke (1980) and Christopher Isherwood. A Personal Memoir (1987). His book Three Literary Friendships (1983), deals with the relationships between Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, Robert Frost and Edward Thomas.

In 1965, he published Christ the Hunter, a spiritual/autobiographical prose poem which had been broadcast in 1964 on the BBC Third Programme. In 1974, Lehmann published a book of poems, The Reader at Night, hand-printed on handmade paper and hand-bound in an edition of 250 signed copies (Toronto, Basilike, 1974). An essay by Paul Davies about the creation of this book is included in Professor A.T. Tolley’s collection, John Lehmann: A Tribute (Ottawa; Carleton University Press, 1987), which also includes pieces by Roy Fuller, Thom Gunn, Charles Osborne, Christopher Levenson, Jeremy Reed, George Woodcock, and others.
John Lehmann died in London on 7 April 1987, aged 79. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: Autograph · Autograph – Rare · Autograph Postcard signed · Catalogue No.10 – International Literature · English Literature – Rare · Lehman, John (publisher) · Liddell-Hart, Adrian · Manuscript / Autograph – Rare · Provenance · Signed
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 32442AB

EUR 1.480,-- 

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